I am Samarth Kothari and I am just a couple of months away from completing my MBA in International Business at Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi. I did my Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from Faculty of Technology and Engineering, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. Having lived for a major part of my life in Vadodara, the quest for an MBA brought me to our country's capital and the journey since then has been more than exciting. MBA has actually been a life changing experience for me on both personal and professional fronts, and this article contains tidbits of some of my experiences at IIFT.
What have you done at your Post-Grad/Business School/Undergrad level that makes you stand out from the crowd?
Entering IIFT, Delhi was a dream come true for me but I had not expected that 'competing with the best in the country' would be so difficult!
Academics to me have always been important and so I have paid a great attention to them at IIFT as well and have managed to stay in the top 10 of the batch. Also, I have developed a great interest in various subjects of international trade, marketing and operations.
An important part of my life here at IIFT has been the various corporate competitions I have participated in. My team was the National Runners-up at Tata Motors' MindRover and that fetched me a Tata Motors pre-placement interview opportunity. I was the part of the team that became the Campus Runners-up at Mahindra War Room Season 8 and I was also adjudged the Best Presenter for the campus round. I was one of the 230 students, from 13000+ students, to reach Round 3 of Economic Times Young Leaders Award. I was a part of the team that reached the campus finals of corporate events of Accenture Strategy and GeP. I have also excelled in various B-school competitions of SP Jain, IIM Rohtak. I have done live projects for firms such as Axereal and MobiTrack. Also, I am a Senior Coordinator at Marketing Research Cell in IIFT and as a part of that I have co-authored a research publication on the buying behavior of millennials.I have also written some articles for club magazines at IIFT
I did my summer internship at Britannia Industries Ltd. in Rajasthan. And at the end of 2 months of immense learning, I received the Best Summer Project Award for the exceptional results that I brought by implementing the project and got the opportunity to present my findings and results to the Managing Director of the company. I have also been nominated to represent IIFT at the Business Standard's Best B-School Project Award.
And as the two years at IIFT draw closer to an end, I have taken up an uphill task of improving my table tennis skills!
What have you done in your life that you are the proudest of?
I did not have any work experience prior to joining IIFT and so I was extremely enthusiastic about my internship because that would be the first place where I would get to implement what I had learnt.
But a project in rural sales in Rajasthan was not going to be an easy one. The implementation part of my project involved route mapping and monitoring the activities of a team of 16 talented salesmen for half a month. And with a lot of planning and strategizing, I was able to achieve unprecedented results in those 2 months. And when my work was appreciated by even the Managing Director of the company and I received the Best Summer Project Award, it was one of the proudest moments of my life.
But in life, the thing that makes me proud is the fact that I guide my decisions according to Karma theory which states a simple fact that for all the good deeds of one's life, one would be rewarded and for all evil acts, one would be reprimanded.
Tell us about your non-academic activities and achievements.
Here at IIFT, I have participated in various corporate competitions and have managed to perform well in many of them. My team was the National Runners-up at Tata Motors' MindRover and that fetched me a Tata Motors pre-placement interview opportunity. I was the part of the team that became the Campus Runners-up at Mahindra War Room Season 8 and I was also adjudged the Best Presenter for the campus round. I was one of the 230 students, from 13000+ students, to reach Round 3 of Economic Times Young Leaders Award. I was a part of the team that reached the campus finals of corporate events of Accenture Strategy and GeP. I have also excelled in various B-school competitions of SP Jain, IIM Rohtak. I have done live projects firms such as Axereal and MobiTrack. Also, I am a Senior Coordinator at Marketing Research Cell in IIFT and as a part of that, I have co-authored a research publication on buying behavior of millennials. I received the Best Summer Project Award during my internship at Britannia Industries Ltd. in and got the opportunity to present my findings and results to the Managing Director of the company. I have also written some articles for club magazines at IIFT. And recently I have taken up the uphill task of improving my table tennis skills!
What is your x-factor?
My X-factor is my tendency to take up uphill tasks and then work with sheer dedication to accomplish them. I do not have many innate capabilities but I have what it takes to work my way up the ladder. Things have never been served on a silver platter to me and I have never regretted that. I love to work and create opportunities for myself. And that is what I have done at IIFT. My decisions in life have been guided by a theory which was brought to my notice by a friend of mine - the theory is called 'Karma Theory' which states the simple fact that one would be rewarded for the righteous deeds that one does and would similarly be reprimanded for all acts of evil. The fact that my personal and professional decisions are governed by a common philosophy helps me complement one with the other. Continuous learning and evolving is what I have always yearned for and I believe that all things that I have done till now and will do in future would help me satisfy that yearning.
Meet the rest of India’s 50 Most Employable Management Graduates from the Class of 2016 here.
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